Back in the day – way, way back in the day – dudes opposed to women’s suffrage loved to depict suffragettes as ugly spinsters (that is, when they weren’t depicting them as sexy young women using their feminine wiles to manipulate men into supporting suffrage). We looked at some examples of this yesterday and noted that, when it comes to dismissing feminists as uggos, some things never change.
But why, oh why, are feminists so (allegedly) ugly? Or, to turn the question around, why are so many (allegedly) ugly women (allegedly) drawn to feminism?
Well, we’re in luck, because some manosphere dickwads have stepped forward to provide us with possible explanations.
Over on Freedom Twenty-Five, the “red pill” Casanova who calls himself Frost offers this theory:
Feminism is the set of ideologies whose aim is to redistribute the natural allocation of access to desirable men. It is Marxism in the Sexual, rather than Economic Marketplace.
Frost is so proud of this sentence of his that he puts it in bold, as I have. He continues:
The ultimate goal of the Feminist is to create a world in which all women are as hideous and awful and dead inside as they are, so that everyone can have an equal timeshare in the alpha harems, and everyone’s fatherless offspring can be raised by the same uninspired bureaucrats in the same grey-walled, concrete and plate-glass buildings.
I can confirm that this is indeed the ultimate goal of feminism; we talk about it at all the secret meetings. The penultimate goal? To get Sleater-Kinney back together again.
Frost breaks it down:
– Feminists tend to be some combination of fat, old, ugly, abrasive, and slutty.
– Feminists want to convince men that we should be attracted to fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts.
– Feminists want to convince women that it is OK for them to be fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts. They want desirable women to become fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts, so that the feminists no longer look so bad in comparison.
– Related to (1) and (2), Feminists want to convince men and women that it is immoral for men to not be attracted to fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts.
This is why Feminism is working so passionately to ruin American women. [Who benefits] from the widespread adoption of feminist beliefs that destroy our once-slim, once-feminine, once-nurturing women? The answer, first and foremost, is the women who were already destroyed to begin with.
Feminists know that, in a monogamous world where everyone pairs up with an equally desirable mate, they could only ever earn the favour of weak, bottom-feeding men. Feminist ideology, i.e. the hysteric and childish whining about Patriarchy, Shaming Language, and Socially Constructed Gender Roles, is no more than the set of rationalizations with which they seek to drag the rest of womankind down to their level.
Over on the blog of a fellow named Anatoly Karlin, meanwhile, a commenter calling himself fcomp has a similar theory to explain why so many feminists are (allegedly) fat fatties.
If you think about it, there is a strong rationale [sic] self interest between feminism and the increase of female obesity. If feminism is to be defined as increasing the societal power of women, then it would serve them well for their to be more obese women.
Go on.
The desirability of a women to a man is far more objective then subjective. If women were to be, across the board, more attractive, if all women became, at minimum, 6s, men who ended up marrying 6s, the men who would be the lowest in male desirability in such a society, wouldn’t nearly be as unhappy as men who end up marrying 1s in our society.
I’m not quite sure that fcomp really understands how averages work. Lake Wobegon aside, you can’t actually have a world in which all women are above average in “objective” desirability.
The logical result of that, is that in such a beautiful society, ironically, the value of female beauty would become far less valuable, and beauty would be far less desired. If there isn’t a chance that one might end up with a landwhale, I suspect that most men would hardly bother with stuff like game and the like. I would imagine that such a society would experience little sexual discrimination, but at the same time, be very anti-female, in the sense that women who are competitive with men in economically productive fields would be quite successful, but at the same time, “feminine virtues”, a females capacity attracting men, the only area in which women surpass men, would be far less valued.
If all women are beautiful, then no women are beautiful?
There is a upper cap on female attractiveness, which are the feminine ideals hardwired into us by evolution, but there is no downward cap. … [F]eminism is intrinsically a downward trend because the only thing a beautiful women can do to that makes herself more desired in a society, is to reduce the amount of beauty in that society.
The blogger on whose blog this muddled comment was posted, Anatoly Karlin, is so impressed with fcomp’s theory that he highlights it in a post of his own, adding
This is why your typical Third Wave feminist or rape activist is fat, has a manjaw, or is otherwise unattractive.
If you are ugly, devaluing beauty is not bad evolutionary strategy.
On a blog called Misanthropy Today, meanwhile, Dan Y. is not only convinced that (most) feminists are ugly; he also seems bitter that anyone would dare criticize him for calling women ugly.
[M]ost women who try to guilt us out of using looks as a criterion for judgment tend to not be very attractive. It makes sense that someone lacking in a certain perceived quality would want to dissuade others from assigning value to that quality, and would want those who possessed that quality to be humble and not flaunt it. It also seems extremely self-centered and petty to try to convince others to think and feel a certain way just so we can marginalize our lesser qualities. …
Feminists’ cries of outrage at man’s obsession with physical beauty are not altruistic. They are … upset that other women are benefitting from a quality that they don’t and probably never will possess. Their own perceived value relative to better-looking women will inevitably increase if looks are dismissed as unimportant.
Apparently, suggesting there’s more to a person than conventional attractiveness = shallow and petty. But basing your judgment of a particular women largely on whether or not she gives you a boner is the height of sophistication.
As these guys show again and again, real ugliness is more than skin deep.
@Joekster, it can occasionally give rise to a need for clarification. As in, “so is your Mum the scientist kind of doctor or the medical kind?” (also sometimes referred to as “you know, a doctor doctor” 😉 )
@Scildfreja
Our king is actually somewhat likable. :p
http://gfx.bloggar.aftonbladet-cdn.se/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2015/05/Skarmavbild-2015-05-27-kl.-16.44.41.jpg
@Axe
I forget all the time. Usually when describing things or processes, rather than people, but I still slip up. It’s hard to re-learn how to speak. Thankfully I’ve completely removed the r-word, but still say dumb, stupid, and crazy. I’m working on it. 🙂
@IP: I know 😀
http://img.memecdn.com/swedish-king-and-his-hat-fetish_o_4395777.jpg
Did … did I break him? Is he coming back? :C Do I need to be more gentle?
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/did-my-neurons-make-me-do-it-9780199568239?cc=us&lang=en&#
@Scildfreja
I have had the great fortune to attend dozens of ISEPP (Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy) lectures, and one in particular springs to memory given in 1998 by a Nancey Murphy entitled something like the “Mind in the Brain”.
The lecture explained how it would be impossible to have a typical sense of an integrated self, if the brain was detached from the larger system of the whole body, because the entire net of stimulus is required for the MIND to exist, including the attention/suppression algorithms. The unrelated ablism discussion also on this forum underlines that very well, as a single handicap can cause a Wiffle Ball Effect, creating compensation in other parts of the net, but if a baby were to be put into a sensory deprivation chamber for life, insanity would most certainly be the result, at least from our normative perspective (Helen Keller still had touch/smell/taste). I have seen Autism explained as a possible lack of suppression of this stimulus net, and that can also be debilitating, again at least to a normative observer.
I respond in the same vein as your apropos comment preferring a non-reductive approach to the decoding of language. I had subsequently clarified not applying the IF – THEN – ELSE decision tree to language itself, but instead simply using common English terms to outline the decision options in place of a set of Boolean Expressions.
In the same way, there is a loss of appreciation of the miracle inherent in the state of wakeful consciousness if it is restricted to the modern version of Phrenology that is referred to as PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
Much like the current list of minimum RDA requirements for vitamins and minerals published and occasionally amended by the USDA, brain physiology studies which structures – when stimulated, altered, impaired or destroyed – cause which symptoms, debilitating or otherwise. A daily dose of 100mg. of Ascorbic Acid in isolation may prevent acute scurvy, but it is not equivalent to Linus Paulings’ in-vivo animal studies showing 2 orders of magnitude greater synthesis rate per Kg. of body mass in most mammals and its heightened protective effects, nor of dietary intake of naturally occurring bioflavinoid complexes in whole foods.
Science can be a weird profession, and also a bit macabre. There was a time when seat belt efficacy and dash geometry and padding was first tested on the cadavers of expired convicted felons, as some States allowed the mutilation of the corpse of a convict (I am naming my next punk band Convicted Corpse!). Even more tragically, various primates were INTENTIONALLY WOUNDED in the head, had electrodes implanted, and were then observed prior to death to map the physiological and behavioral implications of specific site injury. I see the power of the information, but recoil from the methodology. I have also heard of similar research done on human subjects (already wounded, electrode implantation), but the situational nature is usually obscured so I can’t decode the ethics involved.
Using my RDA analogy, knowing what an ideal dosage is for many supplements and foods in combination for optimum health still escapes Dietitians.
As stated in the outline of Ms. Murphy’s book with Warren S. Brown, there is a gulf of work yet ahead to analyze in this other, wider direction (as you also alluded to). Knowing where the speech center is, and how to inhibit it with a claw hammer or an electric charge (I own a Grass Valley S48 stimulator!) does not really explain speech processing at all. My Father has suffered a major loss of left brain function due to ischemic stroke and yet confounded his team of Neurosurgeons because he is still able to speak and understand bilingually, something they assured me was impossible given his level of brain loss.
I can only speak for myself personally. Moments of great stress, where I might die any moment, give me the greatest logical clarity. It’s as if stress puts me into the pause and plan mode, but with added time dilation. I notice it in my BMW when driving very fast, or just prior to an accident I easily avoid, or a confrontation that requires force, or even in COD. It also makes me a monster at academic test-taking. I have trained this same cascade when I have a strong emotional reaction. A significant portion of the time, I get to hit an internal button that changes the track of available decisions from fight-or-flight to an allegorical trainyard turntable, with many more new options. In my profession, conflict resolution and non-confrontational interrogation is key to my being able to successfully deliver a technical solution, in real time.
Kelly McGonigal, PhD appears to agree with Nancey Murphy, that willpower is ALSO a larger-body state-dependent phenomenon, and not just specific-structure-related. She does however echo your “muscle-model” of willpower, where it is considered a limited resource within a given span of time, likely between rest periods. The real world model I would use to picture this mentally is racing tire contact patch adhesion and traction; you can brake, steer, or accelerate, but asking for multiples of these three reduces the proportion of grip for each vector available. Interestingly, muscles are divided into slow and fast twitch types, and these have different endurance envelopes. It makes me wonder if willpower also has several alternate pathways. You mentioned ATP, but secondary and tertiary brain fuel includes glutamine and keytones. Alcohol use disinhibits, blunting certain willpower type behaviors, and the effect of Spirits on the brain is really glutamine down-regulation. Ketosis, once achieved metabolically, provides a glucose-alternate energy model, and at least for me, suppresses appetite.
http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2011/12/29/a-conversation-about-the-science-of-willpower/
-joke-
Perhaps my corpus collosum is like a trampoline and my willpower noodle is like a hot dog!
-end joke-
Seriously, I felt myself being over-emotional as a little kid, and found it interfered with my effectiveness. I feel strong compassion for people, animals and nature, but have developed a metaphorically thick skin through repeated avoidance and suppression. I FEEL IT, but I get to decide if that MATTERS. I am also that way with most kinds of pain. I am honestly more bothered by the concept of disfigurement, and can do minor self-surgery with no anesthetic, like cutting out rust particles from a 1/2″ deep laceration with an OLFA blade, while bathing the wound in a constant stream of IPA. It hurts, but I get it done anyway. As you say, it might be practice. I taught myself to be ambidextrous (or supported a natural tendency through constant training) because I was aesthetically offended I was not equally and bilaterally capable. I have no dominant eye.
Hey, even though you come off with a bit of a combative stance, your responses are appreciated. I did Greco-Roman wrestling in adolescence; this feels a bit like that. I am also good with just a conversation.
Thank you for the gift of your poetry! I got the pointed message, but also enjoyed the evocative imagery. I COULD SMELL THE LOAM! I was a digger as kid, so it resonated with me.
Sometimes I tread softly through the woods, leaving a very light trail, in search of elusive fungi. Other times I drive a bulldozer to rend a path to my goal.
Sir;
I’ll have to be more brief today, I’m afraid; not as much time for poetry. I’m glad you liked it, though! Poetry and music are important, I find. There’s something about cadence and rhythm that runs very deep in us. It’s an effective communications medium and far, far under-used.
Two parts to this one. First, to neuroscience and cognition. I’m going to get a bit irritable, I’m afraid.
Neuroscience in its various stripes is not the field it once was a decade ago, and calling it “modern phrenology” is more than a little insulting. I’m not a neuroscientist, but I use their findings frequently in my work and can tell you that they’re doing real science there. If you’re going to call their findings into question, I’m going to have to ask you to be specific, and be prepared to bring out your biggest guns.
I’m deeply offended at you alluding to the barbarism of the past when talking about the exacting ethical standards to which we adhere today. Them’s fightin’ words. Have you ever seen the amount of work it takes to pass the ethics requirements of your average research lab these days? I’m not even in the medical sciences and the amount I have to do in order to get a study going is enough to make me want to go to private industry.
My colleagues across the aisle have collectively poured hundreds of thousands of hours of honest hard work into their labour. They have constructed their experiments to exacting standards, designed them to be as robust as possible and are conservative in their findings. Do you know who isn’t conservative in their statements of the findings of science? Science communicators. They try to get people interested in science, so they tease with the possibilities of what might be instead of calmly stating what is. I see you’ve linked some science communicators.
(Not that I dislike them, they’re a vital part of science in my opinion. They’re just no replacement for the real deal.)
As an example, you linked Dr McGonigal from Stanford, in which she states that all of the body participates in the application of willpower. You cite this in order to refute my statement about the ACC and its action on the application of willpower. Unfortunately, your citation supports the claim. Dr McGonigal states that the whole body gets involved in the application of willpower. This is true. Blood flow, hormone production, the provision of blood sugar – these are whole-body reactions.
These are also the only features which Dr McGonigal mentions in the contribution of the body to willpower. She otherwise places central the prefrontal cortex, as I did in my statement before. There’s not a neuroscientist alive who thinks that brains operate independent of their context. Our microfluidics lab would perhaps like a word with you if you think otherwise.
Thank you for the link, though! It’s a good whole-body view of willpower, and a nice review of the system.
Specifically, you say
First, My sympathies for you and your father, that’s a very tough experience and I’m very glad he got through it as well as he did.
Second, I’m going to bite back my anger at your suggesting that modern neuroscience is equivalent to bashing someones’ head in with a claw hammer.
Third, I don’t know how long ago that was, but we’re now very aware that speech is not solely left-brain or right-brain, as the whole two-brains theory has long since been demolished. Further, we know quite a bit about how speech is processed. Have an iPhone? Ever heard of Siri? Or perhaps Dragon Dictation by Nuance Corporation? The speech recognition software that is used prevalently today uses a neurological model based on our understanding of how speech is processed. We’ve gone deeper than that as well, and can talk about the ways in which cognition and language are tied biologically.
So, no, we know plenty about how language is processed. No claw hammers required. The rest of your statements are personal anecdote and the metaphors / interesting stories of science popularizers. My statements on cognition and the flaws of self-perception stand. Frankly, my statements stand atop very well established science buttressed by thousands of studies; you’re confronting a huge wall if you want to contest them. Feel free.
Second, I intended to bring it back to your original post in this thread, but you’ve made me angry with your slandering the work of my colleagues, so I won’t be able to do that clearly. I’d just like you to defend this, please:
i.e. bring your points back to why you’re actually here.
And if you would, bring some evidence. What you believe is nothing more than untested hypotheses. You want to accuse swathes of women of ‘working tirelessly to damage relations between women and men’? You had best bring your A game.
Off to the lab with me.
Shallow is even more teal deer happy than Mish mash was. Wow.
Anyway, I have an addendum to Scildfreja’s request.
Before Shallow can even set about providing evidence that blatantly Unattractive women are trying to damage gender relations, he’s going to have to define blatantly unattractive. He’s also going to have to show where the definition came from. Unattractive cannot be defined as whatever makes his personal boner sad.
I’m also wondering if unattractive men are trying to damage relations. If not, why are only women doing it?
Even in your anger you are not less of a scholar, Scildfreja. May your studies yield firm p-values and may your results be reproduceable.
Stage direction: the following is to be read in a slow, clear voice.
Dear Trolly McTrollpants,
Scildfreja has asked you what you think you’re doing here. To me it’s abundantly clear: you’re here to wind people up. This is something you’ve shown yourself very good at, but that’s nothing to be proud of. Beneath that, you don’t appear to have anything of value to say.
You also seem to feel that you know enough about any given field to contradict people who are expert in it, whether that field be gender studies, feminist activism, their own lived experiences, or neuroscience. This is a remarkably rash position to take with internet strangers, but this seems to be something you’re confident doing.
I am annoyed at this. However, just because I get annoyed at something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. In fact, why don’t you go ahead even further?
To this end, I would be grateful if you would tell me about the habitable-zone calculations around binary stars, with specific attention paid to orbital stability. If you’d like, I can give you some links to papers to help you out. ArXiv is your friend. I’m sure someone as free thinking as yourself is capable of giving deep and lasting insights on the matter.
Or are you the sort of bottom feeder who runs away when a white man enters the room? Surely not.
Take your time.
How many words could you excise from that novella and still have something resembling a point?
@WWTH
This gon be good…
@Axecalibur
There was something resembling a point there?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2769577/Poundland-worker-snatched-claw-hammer-shelves-carried-horror-attack-colleague-left-brain-damaged-rejected-advances.html
@Scildfreja
Within my own lifetime, I am aware of such primate research having been done. This is before such tools as Positron Emission Tomography, but still. All kinds of ethical violations occur all around us, such as “enhanced interrogation”. If you know of extremely carefull practitioners, that is excellent! But their work IS built upon such past barbarisms. Phrenology was once taken quite seriously by some. Instead of taking personally an oblique reference to recent interpersonal violence as a cause of brain injury not related to scientific research, but then likely becoming a case study after the fact, please consider I am devoid of intent to insult the ethics of your unknown colleagues in even a colorfull seeming comment.
My work does involve field theory, and I have more than an inkling that it plays a part in the greater picture of mental processes. This is not to impugn specific research occuring TODAY that I have no access to.
My Dad’s stroke was in 2012. Mechanically, his neurosurgeons were very good. But their current education in the theory of the brain did not equip them to make an accurate estimation of his remaining linguistic ability. While it is a tall order to expect such prescience, perhaps less prediction should have been offered. I appreciate your kind words; we are all pulling for him.
In science, lab work is indispensible. However, it is precisely the process of science communication that brings new perspectives into the fold so that labwork has new paradigms to test.
I have direct hands-on experience in the industrial automation field, specifically artificial machine vision and the cognitive models of pattern recognition that entails. I am also an ardent student of noise theory, which convolved with statistics, high speed acquisition and repetition and a kind of democratic error correction leads to real time submicron metrology. Actually making a machine see things gives me a qualified insight that I am happy to share.
One of life’s great achievments, and a worthy pursuit, is the ability to disagree without condemnation. I am sure you agree! 😀
I have a philosophical position of my own. Scientific theory is just that, until it spawns usable technology directly attributed to that theory. A bewildering host of current theory might be completely wrong, because zero technology has yet to result from it.
My machines SEE, but they neither know they see, nor do they care. Self driving cars, based on my own awareness of the state of the art, are going to regularly kill people, because they don’t understand the gravity of making an error, there is no hyper vigilance, no additional horsepower added in a crisis, and no motivation to prevent one. Preprogrammed rules of engagement may actually cause such a machine brain equipped vehicle to kill its occupants, based on a technovision phantasm. We are far from ready for widespread implementation; pushing the timetable is going to be a disaster.
Mercedes Benz just released a model that parks itself in a garage at 3 mph without crushing a bicycle and a plastic Christmas Tree. That’s really about where we are with AI safe for the Consumer.
This is my angle on cognitive research, and why I am paying attention to the wetware side of things. That doesn’t make me an expert by a long shot, and I am open to more data!
Skepticism of strangers isn’t an insult at all, until you really know someone and still won’t give them their due.
It’s true, I only skimmed that teal deer, but it doesn’t appear that he’s addressed this
Or this
Yet another way he is similar to that MishMast troll. Their styles are a bit different so I don’t think they’re the same person. There’s just a lot of tedious necro trolls haunting the interwebs.
I have my own analysis of No need for a shallow grave for tomorrow but I do have a short version in analogy just for fun for now. They are looking at the commentariat, claiming to see y=aX^2+b in the behavior and in unattractive people they know about, but are refusing to give us any example coordinates or a and b. I simply refuse to take it on their word that there is a parabola when it’s their job to show it.
I have no reason to think that we agree on what is decent or civil, or that the things they say are ad hominems or irrational or illogical are. I have no reason to accept that anyone’s text matches the logic they set up. I have no reason to believe that they are they are not simply declaring relevant criticism to be incivil out of a fearful need to handicap people they disagree with.
They can’t simply say they see certain patterns in the words of people here and refuse to point them out and show how they line up with their characterizations. If they are so smart and intelligent they will be able to reason from the general they present to the specifics that constructed it. Anything else is intellectual and moral cowardice.
On top of that once again we have someone talking about emotion who has absolutely no idea what an emotion is, and points out the presence of the feeling (no specifics of course) without showing that there is no content or content that is affected by the emotion in some problematic way. They use lots of big words but in the end only offer an empty characterization. I hope they change that.
Deleted. Wrong post.
Dear Trolly McTrollpants,
When an expert in their field says “bring their A-game,” and your only cited source is to the Daily Mail, then the only response you leave open is mockery. Your argument no longer needs to be taken seriously, and neither do you.
If you prefer a diagrammatic depiction of your position, then here’s one:
You also haven’t stepped up on anything that anyone else has asked. I’m disappointed in you. I was looking forward to hearing about orbitals.
@Brony:
I wonder if someone’s done an analysis of how the Dunning-Kruger effect varies with different levels of social privilege? I think we have a data point here.
@scildfreja
I’ve recently become aware that a lot of the time I do use black and white thinking and have fallen into the trap of believing that since I thought it it must be the truth. Your posts on rationality and perception and how they at best of times are skewed and messy have made me think on how that reflects on me and my self image.
Those are the things I think would be the most helpful to find out more about. Either if you could take some time to keep breaking things down into bite size chunks, or just point me to a few basic studies/resources I would be really grateful.
@NNFASG,
Congratulations on your successful electrical career! I’ve worked with PLCs myself, though more of my work has been with arduinos and actual itty-bitty-linux-boxes. I’m familiar enough to say that my favourite brand is Phoenix Contact for their utterly indestructible high-grade tier of equipment and their absolutely stellar customer service. They’ve helped me out a number of times. Their Canadian office is top notch, can’t recommend them enough.
Funny that you mention PLCs, though. Last week I ended up providing a journal a review on adaptive PLC training systems. Some grad students from Beijing Normal University are working on a system for teaching PLC programming and operation in a more efficient and resilient manner. That they managed to fit the core of the curriculum into such a small, efficient package was very impressive.
I felt bad for having to reject their paper, since they didn’t actually provide any information other than talking about their animations and efforts. They are building up to doing a proper study; I gave them some comments on how they should conduct the study and do some analysis of the outcomes, and integrate that into their paper. Then it’d be accepted, and would be a worthwhile addition to the corpus, too. PLC programming is an area that could use some love in educational design.
(Though Omron’s current line of PLCs are remarkably easy to program. USB into the thing and design your program like a flow chart. The hardware clicks together like lego. It’s a real pleasure to work with that stuff.)
The rest of what you’ve posted is lovely insight, but also pretty much all personal experience and conjecture. They’re good experiences and I don’t want to slight them! But they don’t qualify as evidence. Nor does the experience of programming PLCs, teaching oneself Boolean logic as a child, or working with machine vision systems qualify as evidence of the validity of your positions.
(Interesting that you bring up machine vision, though! I’m working with a friend on some OCR educational systems right now. It’s his side project, and when it’s done I suspect it’ll be a hugely successful app on the Android store. High speed character recognition on low-power devices can provide some very handy functionality. We’re right now looking at an iterative string-matching algorithm. Typically it’d be too slow for the large database of characters that we have to match, but we’re tinkering with an iterative quartering mechanism to reduce the candidate pool more quickly.)
Are you going to defend your position that a significant number of women are trying to ruin the relationships between men and women? Or are you happy to abandon that position? Do try to practice some of that brain plasticity you’re on about – it’s just a fancy term for the ability to robustly change ones’ mind in the face of evidence, after all. You’re welcome over on this side of the fence, I promise.
@Dali
Not a good point…
@Lanariel,
I’d be happy to talk about this sort of thing! No, really, it’s the sort of topiuc that you can’t get me to shut up about if you give me the chance. I will do what I can to limit myself to a small number of words. Conciseness is important!
(Of course, I recognize that the reason why I like talking about this sort of thing is because I know enough to project an air of authority, which I do not actually have, but it is enough to fulfill the Drive to Achieve according to four drive theory. So I am prone to slip into the voice-of-authority mode frequently. Please be aware that I do this without holding actual authority!)
((Of course of course, I do this due to an unconscious perception of lack-of-control in other areas of my life, which prevents me from fulfilling that drive in other ways. Which is blatantly ridiculous when viewed objectively, but brains are unfortunately incapable of objectivity. So be aware that I have an unconscious drive to be perceived as authoritative, which may or may not be healthy to feed.))
(((Of course of course of course, fulfilling this drive will also allow me to think more clearly overall, provided that other drives are also met and I am not feeling under threat. So … well, you get it. These things are recursive. There is no foundation. There is no bottom to the depth of our unconscious)))
I’m going to go for a short walk and then have to attend a work meeting. I’ll reply afterwards!
@Shallow Grave – I mean this in the nicest way: would it be possible for you to write more clearly and succinctly? Your comments remind me of a mountain goat, hopping rapidly from one lofty peak to the next (Helen Keller, Boolean expressions, vitamins, seat belts), pausing just long enough in each spot to admire the view of your own intellect, while nimbly avoiding the original issue.
So let’s ask again. 1. Why is it undesirable to question cultural assumptions about female attractiveness? 2. Why is it a threat to male-female relations if unattractive women are considered full participants in the dating pool?
@Lanariel,
(I’m a bit rambly, I apologize. I’ll break this up into two posts so that it isn’t as big and cumbersome.)
I wish I could give you some good, solid resources. There are some great books on how brains work and how their quirks result in our cognition, and there are also some terrible ones. Most of what I know has been dredged from white papers, journal articles, and various books in psychology, sociology, mathematics and rationality.
One of my favourite works is “Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas R. Hofstadter. I’ll warn you that it’s not a light read though. it’s nearly 800 pages in my softcover version, and it is dense. Fortunately it’s sliced into a number of sections so it’s not hard to read bits and pieces, but it’s best read as a whole. It’s full of insights, and it helps to let them wash over you one after the other, so that the next one hits while your brain is still vibrating from the last.
This said – books suck. There’s no replacement for lived experiences; books just give you a leg up. So I’m happy to talk a little about the little rules and thoughts I have on the topic, and I’m utterly, completely flattered that you’d want to ask them of me. Thank you.
You’re basically struggling to change your mind, it sounds like. You recognize that you’re starting to feel very black-and-white, which is a normal thing to be honest. Cognitive flexibility is like physical flexibility – it gets tougher with age, and it requires painful work to maintain. You won’t give yourself back problems by practicing it, though you might give yourself some headaches 😉 And it can hurt your self-image over the short term. But just like exercise, if you can work through that, you’ll be healthier, happier and more capable in the end.
(Personally, though, I like thinking of it as mental hygiene. Your brain goes all gungy and gross if you don’t take care of it after all.)
There are a few things that can help. First, the biological.
Neurons rely heavily on fats and proteins. You know those “Omega 3” fats they tell you are so good? They’re vital in the construction and maintenance of neurons, in assembling cell walls. The other Omega fatty acids are longer-chain hydrocarbons and less flexible, but the body will use them in place of Omega 3 fats if those aren’t available. Those longer-chain fats aren’t as flexible when formed into the bilipid layers of the cell wall, suggesting that dendrites will grow less vigorously, making your brain less able to store new memories and adapt to new situations. So! Eat some fish or some flax. You don’t need a lot of the short-chain fats, but try to keep aware of it and make sure you’re getting some.
In the same vein, the more flexible neurons will need new stimulation if you want them to actually change configuration. Listen to new music, look at new things, take on new patterns. Seek out things you’ve never experienced, or even things that you’ve experienced before but it’s been awhile. Get uncomfortable.
Neurons generate growth cones when forming new dendrites; doing so is a relatively energy intensive task. Sleep well, give yourself eight hours if you can. Nothing messes with your hormone balance quite like a busted-up sleep schedule. Eat well, get them calories up there. Exercise, so that when the time comes to think your brain will be well supplied with oxygen and glucose.
Next post will be the sorts of behaviours you can take on in order to improve your mental hygiene.
@Lanariel,
Of course, the biological stuff is all well and good, but those are the sorts of things most people do these days, anyways, and they’re certainly not enough – they’re required but not sufficient. Now comes the hard part – learning to change your mind. More specifically – how to identify when you hold a belief that’s wrong, and how to recognize a better belief when you encounter it.
This is hard. You’re fighting against your own brain here. Worse, you’re fighting against your own perceptions and your own sense of self. Our brains generate options which conform to our perception of the world, so if you run into something that’s actually more correct, but it violates your sense of self in some way, your brain kicks in with some form of confirmation bias. Flaws will be emphasized, possible detractors will appear out of nowhere. Dangers will be exaggerated. It’ll feel wrong.
This is one of the harder things to learn – that our perceptions lie to us. Our evaluations of things aren’t based on how right or wrong, how good or bad they are, but instead are based on whether they make us feel good or not. (The things that make us feel good or bad are complex and a bit out of scope, but they’re pretty important to understand.) So don’t trust your gut. I’ve found that to be a useful tool.
Next one is sort of zen – there’s a whole lot of correlation between zen thought and how I perceive this sort of behaviour. Surrender your opinions. They are not you, they are not yours. There are an infinite number of ways to be wrong, and only one way to be right – what are the odds that your opinion has hit the bullseye on that infinite dartboard? Surrender them, and become comfortable in the limbo that remains. Get used to saying “I’m wrong” about things you care about. Get used to saying “I don’t know”, and then instead of supplying an opinion, let the world supply it for you.
Of course that’s a lovely bit of metaphor, but what does that mean, and how do you do it? Just like zen, there’s no formula, but I can give you some help by telling you what I do.
Perhaps you’re familiar with Occam’s Razor? The principle thrown about by internet uber-rationalists and dude-atheists in arguments everywhere, in that, when one is presented with a number of possibilities, the simplest one is often the right one. It’s properly called the Principle of Parsimony. Most proto-logisticians practically worship it for its ability to tear apart the arguments of others.
I loathe the Principle of Parsimony, mostly because it’s a weapon that’s usually turned outwards onto the arguments of others. It is a self-defense employed to protect ones’ ideas. This is the same for almost everyone who cries “ad hominem!” or “Dunning-Kruger!” They’re a way to protect yourself from the attack which an opposing idea represents.
If you want to be able to change your mind, do not defend yourself against the attacks of others. Let the blow land. There is a sister principle to Occam’s Razor, called the Principle of Charity – when facing an opposing idea, spend time with that idea and imagine it in the strongest form you can. Lean into the blow coming your way. When someone tells you that your idea is bad and you should feel bad? Believe them. Get them to explain in exhaustive detail. Take it in. Even if your conscious brain is kicking and screaming about how stupid the argument is, even if you struggle to choke back angry retorts, even if you have a dictionary’s worth of reply. Accept the wound.
(Later, once you’ve accepted the knock-down blow, you may then carefully examine where their opinions fail. But not immediately. Give it at least a few minutes thinking of the ways in which they might be right.)
This is the part where I said it can hurt your self esteem, because if you’re doing it right, it will hurt. You’ll feel terrible for getting into the argument when it turns out that they have some valid points, you’ll feel vulnerable and defensive and miserable. And that’s great. Remember, this is all about you – who cares if they win the argument, or you look stupid. You’re growing. As much as it hurts, you’ll eventually come to feel it as a good sort of hurt.
So that’s the second thing I can think of, and probably the toughest. Because you have to practice it. Start with things that don’t mean a lot to you at first. For me, I was an atheist when I started down this road, and I decided that I would give the concept of faith another try – I would apply the principle of charity to the concept and would accept it as true, even while I knew I didn’t actually believe it.
It’s a strange experience – I still consciously felt as if my atheism was correct, because you can’t actually make these changes consciously. But at the same time, I started to see the cracks in my disbelief. I could see the flaws in it more clearly, and I could see the stronger parts of the arguments for faith. I pushed the window of my belief a little. Now? Now I am happy to say that I extend beyond both concepts – I am both a believer and an atheist simultaneously.
(The ability to hold multiple and opposing viewpoints while keeping a coherent world-view is important to the mind. Anyone who tells you that you can’t have cognitive dissonance inside of your world-view is limiting themselves, and also lying to themselves.)
But yes, practice. Practice on little things at first – things you believe, but aren’t really central to your sense of self. That’s what I’m actually doing here in my sparring with the visitors to this blog. I’m practicing charity, taking them at their word, and lending their arguments the strongest form that I can. I take it in, and digest it, and only after that do I reply with the most honest replies I can find. That’s what the last name of my screen name is. Free-from-anger. Accept the wound.
(Of course, I’m actually doing it because it fulfills a drive to achieve and a drive to defend, two fundamental drives that all humans have. The thrill of victory and the glow of defending the truth. This fact is inescapable – it’s how we generate goals. I am a hypocrite, and no amount of zen rationalism will change that, because I am a human and have human drives.)
((Hypocrisy does not invalidate the truth; I can both take this action as a quest for truth and to fulfill a basic drive to achieve and protect. I can hold both of these things inside of myself. Accept the wound.))
It’s really painful to do this. You’re going to feel awful about how wrong you are, and that’s the best way to know you’re doing it right. If you don’t feel bad about it, you haven’t been hit hard enough, and haven’t taken it in deeply enough. Truth hurts. Accept the wound. So the last piece of advice is to be gentle with yourself.
If you’re doing it right you’re going to feel stupid and worthless and like a terrible hypocrite. In the depths of it, remember that you are stretching for freedom from yourself. You are cutting away the parts that are wrong, and letting grow the parts that are right. You aren’t miserable or terrible, you’re human. You’re just actively seeking to discover your flaws. Accept them, let them be a part of you while they are there. Be gentle with yourself.
I’ll let it be there, but do please critique and criticize or ask more. My thoughts are very disjointed and piecemeal on this stuff. It’s hard to be clear in the instructions for building a soul crucible, because every soul is different. I’m still very much in the process of learning this, and there’s no book, so it’s very slow going. I’m sure you and others here have insights too, and I’d love to hear them.
@ lanariel & scildfreja
As always Scildfreja has done one of her superlative analyses so anything I can add can only be superfluous, but FWIW I can mention just a couple of points that work for me, YMMV of course.
Firstly you don’t need an opinion on most things. A basic moral code is handy, but “try not to be a dick” covers most things. Where you’re not sure just listen to what people being affected say and go with that.
For the rest though it doesn’t matter. Your view can’t change anything and whether you’re right or wrong maps no difference to your own life whatsoever. So why paint yourself into a corner? If you feel the need to consider a topic learn what all the various positions are but don’t nail your colours to any particular mast. Just enjoy the debate.
One thing I would disagree with Scildfreja on is the idea that there only one right opinion on a given subject. I believe that there can be a while range of views, often incompatible, but still equally reasonable. Of course that still means there’s a finite set if potential correct opinions against an infinity of incorrect ones, but it does mean you have more options. To follow Scildfrejas analogy it’s like having more darts or a bigger bullseye.
Don’t be afraid of cognitive dissonance, enjoy it. I hold lots of contrary views simultaneously. It’s like having a quantum waveform. Don’t collapse it if you don’t have to.
Keeping your options open allows for happy flexibility and the best chance of coping with any contingency. It’s the same with opinions. Learn to love uncertainty and uncertainty will love you back.